Homo luzonensis: New human species found in Philippines

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There's a new addition to the family tree: an extinct species of human that's been found in the Philippines.

It's known as Homo luzonensis, after the site of its discovery on the country's largest island Luzon.
Its physical features are a mixture of those found in very ancient human ancestors and in more recent people.
That could mean primitive human relatives left Africa and made it all the way to South-East Asia, something not previously thought possible.
The find shows that human evolution in the region may have been a highly complicated affair, with three or more human species in the region at around the time our ancestors arrive.
One of these species was the diminutive "Hobbit" - Homo floresiensis - which survived on the Indonesian island of Flores until 50,000 years ago.
Prof Chris Stringer, from London's Natural History Museum, commented: "After the remarkable finds of the diminutive Homo floresiensis were published in 2004, I said that the experiment in human evolution conducted on Flores could have been repeated on many of the other islands in the region.
"That speculation has seemingly been confirmed on the island of Luzon... nearly 3,000km away."

Continue reading: BBC News